When it comes to families, the common definition involves DNA- i.e. a mother, a father, and one or more children who are all related and may or may not live within the same household. Unfortunately, this belief only defines a nuclear family. The nuclear family has been around for millennia, but are now becoming far and in between. In 1970, 40 percent of households were married couples with children. Such households made up 19 percent of homes in 2013 (Babay 1). The result of this decline perhaps involves couples not marrying and simply start raising kids like my parents did. Other families may or may not involve blood relation, but all families, no matter what kind, include similar ideas, beliefs, trust and love for one another. Without these characteristics, a family is not quite a family- it's more like a group of strangers who live under the same roof.
When it comes to blood relation, the nuclear family is not alone. Single parent families are one of the most common families of the twenty-first century. In fact, single parents have more than tripled as a share of American households since 1960 (Mathur, Fu, and Hansen 1). Even though only one parent is involved, they're still considered a family because of the love and trust within it. When my dad finally left my tiny white house, my mom took care of my older brother and me. We became tight knit and every day love spread throughout the household. We all agreed that our past home life needed to be changed so we could truly be happy and we are now, even though our family soon became a stepparent family not even two months later. It was so sudden and unexpected that neither my brother nor I saw it coming until our mom introduced him to us as our stepfather. To this day, she still hasn't explained to us how this happened, but we tried to adjust to this new lifestyle nonetheless.
The closest family to the textbook definition is the stepparent family as there are a mother, father, and one or more children, though one of the parents and some of the children are not blood related to the other parent and children.
